


grey

by orphan_account



Series: Fullmetal Fortnight 2014 [21]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - SBURB Fusion, Angst and Tragedy, Failed Session, Gen, Gratuitous quotations from Yeats.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 10:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1344127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sessions fail. It happens, and it happens more often than one would like to think: The horrorterrors whisper too urgently into the ears of the child gods, straying them from their immortal path of creation and destruction to scar the world with the ashen-grey despair of a deity come undone. The Skaian clouds by contrast glow too parsimoniously to the eyes of the child gods, keeping them from their worry and concern in the thick wraps of a golden future that could never change to dull genesis with the ashen-grey despair of a deity without purpose.</p><p>As a universe manifests, time winds down and space cools as creation expands. One cannot say when the gears shift from the virgin wonder of creation to the sullen reams of destruction. Or whether, even, the reams come in the ephemeral blazes of heroic glory or in the gradual glaciers of slow starvation.</p><p>The gods begin to lose their roles.</p><p>The gods begin to lose their minds.</p><p>-</p><p>[Knowledge of Homestuck is required to read this fic; knowledge of FMA is not.]</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [FalconKnightCordelia](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=FalconKnightCordelia).



> Written for FMA Week 2014. Prompt 13-A: "Crossover". Written for one of my best friends. She and I have been working on this for a couple of weeks, figuring out the timeline and the classpects and so on, and I've been writing it on and off for about a fortnight. Since she was feeling down today because of stupid people doing stupid things, I decided to post it. <3 I love you, FKC. You keep on pushin', all right?
> 
> Also, my 100th fic. Hell to the yes!
> 
> Unedited/unbeta'd/etc. But the look on a certain datefriend's face was enough. Trust me.

Sessions fail. It happens, and it happens more often than one would like to think: The horrorterrors whisper too urgently into the ears of the child gods, straying them from their immortal path of creation and destruction to scar the world with the ashen-grey despair of a deity come undone. The Skaian clouds by contrast glow too parsimoniously to the eyes of the child gods, keeping them from their worry and concern in the thick wraps of a golden future that could never change to dull genesis with the ashen-grey despair of a deity without purpose.

As a universe manifests, time winds down and space cools as creation expands. One cannot say when the gears shift from the virgin wonder of creation to the sullen reams of destruction. Or whether, even, the reams come in the ephemeral blazes of heroic glory or in the gradual glaciers of slow starvation.

The gods begin to lose their roles.

The gods begin to lose their minds.

 

They began with six. Half of the maximum. Half of the wheel that should spawn the universe: the fabric of space and the gears of time; the wings of hope and the flourish of life; the pulsations of blood and the mysteries of void. Yet the other half languished, forgotten, never removed from the shelf or tipped into the cauldron. Cauldron, like a witch’s brew. The Witch of Space, brewing a new universe of a cauldron of frogs, but for the genetic code missing its half, and her Knight of Life by her side, never once noticing the noose that tightened more and more tightly around their throats with the force of a chain and the bite of a garrote.

Like a chemical reaction missing a base component—or so the Prince of Blood and the Seer of Time would explain, later, when the child gods joined in a circle to consider the bombardment of meteors through the Skaian halo to disrupt the careful chessgame played over aeons on the black and white below—the brew faltered, the frogs perished, the Land of Waste and Frogs returned slowly to the barren badlands that had swallowed the world before the Knight of Life called green into being. Green.

For the Knight and the Hero of Space would always come together in the end to bring forth life into the universe.

A life that had failed.

 

The Heir of Hope flitted between the Knight of Life, who regarded her duties and necessary fealty to the Witch of Space as a burden, and the Sylph of Void, who in turn flitted between the Prince of Blood and the Seer of Time, who is turn flitted between the Prince of Blood and the Witch of Space, who in turn flitted between the Seer of Time and the Knight of Life, who in turn flitted between the Witch of Space and the Heir of Hope, and so the cycle went on. Tremulous interconnections between the child gods that never quite formed into the six-pointed star of creation and destruction, of the six dualities on two separate axes that would dictate the shape and curve of the universe-to-come, of the world-to-be.

For a time the brief connections functioned well as the child gods collapsed the star and expanded it, the points circling in tandem in the spaces and voids between the worlds or slipping in three duos. Akin to a benzene ring—or so the Prince of Blood and the Seer of Time would explain, later, when the child gods joined in a circular to consider the utter devastation of their womb and what slouched towards their quest beds to be born—the double bonds rotated about the hexagon, oscillated back and forth and back forth and back and forth without ever breaking through, electrons shuttled without an appreciable alteration in the fabric of reality. In the fabric of spacetime, as they would once have said, except that since the child gods’ arrival in the world beyond the Gate, the concept of Space and the concept of Time had suddenly transformed into something quite disparate.

For, of course, there existed the law of conservation of matter and energy. There existed the principle of equivalent exchange, had _always_ existed the principle of equivalent exchange, and if alchemy did not function in this strange world beyond the Gate, then the law of equivalent exchange continued to hold true.

Yes, the child gods had attained powers. But such powers could be _studied_ , could be _observed_ and _understood_ and _described_ , could be _predicted_ from the beginning until the end of days. The Prince of Blood recorded the boost in power attained from the various fraymotifs; the Witch of Space illustrated the leylines of not-quite- _chi_ over the body that accompanied the proper and improper use of their powers; the Seer of Time wrote down the interrelations between the various Classes and Aspects that he noticed, such as the strange correlation between Space and Time, or the curious duality between the Seer and the Witch or between the Sylph and the Prince; the Sylph of the Void and the Heir of Hope and the Knight of Life noted their experiences per the request of the Witch of Space, and the studies went on.

The Seer of Time extrapolated further. He mused upon the world that they inhabited, mused upon the six empty planets that the Sylph of Void had seen once in the prophetic clouds, mused upon the apparent holes in his theory.

At least four Aspects were gone. At least four, and if he knew anything at all of symmetry, six. Six Aspects. Six Classes.

Empty planets. Somehow, somewhere, the others hadn’t made it, whoever the _others_ were supposed to have been.

 

The two moons burned between gold and violet. On one dreamed the Witch of Space and the Sylph of Void and the Seer of Time; on the other rested the Knight of Life and the Prince of Blood and Heir of Hope.

The horrorterrors whispered. They promised to the princets of the darkness, visions of grandeur and pledges of glory. An imperial tattoo along his shoulders; a reinvisioning of her form; a body made whole and a mother returned to him.

The Skaian clouds glowed. They promised to the princets of the light, visions of grandeur and pledges of glory. A mother and father beaming at her; a manifestation of his soul that could feel pain; a people cheering for their princess.

But none of them had any need for that which lurked just beyond the edges of their fingers, whether of flesh or of fullmetal. They had one another, forever. They _were_ the child gods, beautiful in their power and immortal in their stride.

Then the one—who should have lived most immortal of all—perished, alone, in a bout of stupidity in the Land of Deserts and Gold, and the universe lost its hope.

Lost its Hope.

 

No one heard of his death until the Exiles that screamed in their minds attacked. By the time the Knight of Life—who _protected_ life, who _protected_ growth, who _protected_ opportunity and potential and Hope—arrived at the Heir’s land, his body had slipped into a deepset chill. Her reaction was less of desar as of anger, as of a Rage that charred her to the marrow. She kissed him. Desperately, even, while the Witch of Space held her hand with the intimacy sparked of love.

Too late.

 _Too late_.

The child gods convened. The Seer of Time apologised a thousandfold for his actions, for his _in_ action, for his sins which had resulted in the death of their best friend. The others protested: _not his fault, never his fault_.

Still he wept, and they wept, for they had lost their Hope, brother, lover, friend, promise of immortality. In a single instant the game became so much more than that.

In a single instant, they began to wonder if their homes had truly dissipated into nothingness. Nations. People. Families.

After the tears had dried on their cheeks, they turned to fury, to wrath, at the world that had taken their Hope from them. Piece of piece they elected to rip apart the universe at the seams until they discovered the second Gate, discovered the way back, discovered the truth behind the twisted events that turned and turned and turned away.

Their lands broke apart at their feet and still the answers did not come. And of all of the lands the Land of Night and Feathers sank under the weight of the wrath of the Knight of Life, who would rip the universe, who would tear it to pieces until her automail cracked and her bones shattered if it meant returning the boy she had lost.

When the gods died their bodies decayed as any human’s. When the gods died they left boys and girls and enbies and _children_.

Child gods.

 

At the zenith of the carnage the Seer of Time sent a message. Claimed to have uncovered— _something_. Bid them come to his land immediately, because he had deduced a method in which he might be able to utilise his powers to somehow bring back the Heir of Hope.

Hope.

Yet when the child gods—four of them, now, in a holy quartet of space, of life, of blood, of void—found one another on the Land of Strings and Steel, they stepped upon a world eerily silent, eerily devoid of the gentle orchestral lull that they had come to associate with the golden-haired Seer, with the golden-haired Hero of Time.

The Sylph of Void knew. Had visited, on occasion, when the Seer of Time went off to another land.

The Seer of Time had vanished And judging by the messages, where his name lay greyed out, he had _left_. In the deep annals of Skaia they discovered the massive tablets, each of which bore an inscription of a distinct Aspect. Blood. Life. Space. Void. And Time, and Hope, with the stone dilapidated and crumbling and ever so slowly transforming into emptiness. As if the Heir of Hope had never been. As if the Seer of Time had never deep.

And half a dozen more. Each of marked with an Aspect they had never seen before. The stone cut of a different shade, of a grey so dark it bordered on sable, like names crossed out from a list with an ink born of the midnight skies.

Or like tombstones.

Grief burning up his eyes, the Prince of Blood returned to the Land of Strings and Steel. Brushed the dust from his brother’s notebooks. Opened to the final page.

Dipped the pen in ink. Wrote: _Theory of Twelve Aspects: Confirmed. Theory of Twelve Classes: Further Support_.

Droplets of wetness ran the ink across the page.

He refused to call them _tears_.

 

The Heir of Hope. The Seer of Time. Now they stumbled, Hopeless, enRaged. Now they stumbled in the Timeless murmur of a dying world.

 

Somehow, somewhen, the universe broke in half. Not quite literally. But without the Heir of Hope and the Seer of Time, the connections between the Prince of Blood and the Sylph of Void, and the Knight of Life and the Witch of Space, had torn irreparably. At first the Witch of Space insisted on pushing forward, and the Knight of Life waited. Waited. Waited further.

Waited until the Witch realised, at last, that they had lost the game. A sadistic game, yes, and a game that had destroyed them.

But lost it, ultimately, nonetheless.

The Prince of Blood and the Sylph of Void took to the Land of Chalk and Scarlet for a few months, then to the Land of Springs and Silence before drifting, with the inevitability of two extinguished stars spiralling closer and closer to oblivion at the event horizon, to the Land of Strings and Steel.

The final time the four saw one another they married. Jointly. A double wedding, of sorts, almost to acknowledge the split. And because someone had to preside over the ceremonies of the other, and the rest of the universe had gone dark.

The Knight of Life and the Witch of Space retired to the Land of Night and Feathers. The birdsongs calmed them; the persistence twilight set further the Timelessness. Days sank by. Weeks. Months.

Years, perhaps. Neither of them knew for certain, since they had discarded whatever devices they could have used to message the others.

They fell in love. They had always been in love—or so it felt—but now, in the Timeless universe where the Blood bonds of friendship had failed and the Void had receded, they could see one another, truly. With nothing but the Space in which to Live.

They Lived. For each other, where their Aspects intersected: creation, growth, proliferation, renewal, opportunity.

All of the opportunity in the world.

 

When the darkness proved too much to bear—all of the lands, really, had been dimming piece by piece, and the imps and ogres had all but stopped appearing, prompting the Witch of Space and the Knight of Life to ration their grist, even though they had more than enough to last them millennia—the Heroes departed for the Land of Chalk and Scarlet to reunite with their friends. The land had greyed into ash.

The Prince of Blood.

Not quite yet panicking but close enough that their hearts leaped to their throats, they found trails to the land of Springs and Silence. Also greyed, the springs rusted, the silence cleaved in two by the gentle murmurs of the metal breaking into pieces.

Desperate, the Witch of Space and the Knight of Life stepped onto the gravesite and shivered: The Land of Strings and Steel would have decayed first, far before the other lands. High atop the only tower that remained, which used to form the massive shape of a violin before the decay had toppled aeons into the sand, the Witch of Space and the Knight of Life found the remains. Of the Prince of Blood. Of the Sylph of Void.

 

Bodies.

Child gods, who had considered themselves worthy of touching the sun, who had gambled their lives and _lost_.

 

Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

 

How much longer, the Witch of Space and the Knight of Life wondered, did _they_ have left? How much longer until the creeping grey consumed the universe as a whole?

When they sliced open their flesh they did not Bleed; when they gazed into the skies the Void had passed to bring them Truth.

Truth.

They would die. They would die, useless and forgotten and grey. Grey. _Grey_.

Silt to silt, dust to dust.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who didn't catch it: Ling was the Heir of Hope; Lan Fan, the Knight of Life; May Chang, the Witch of Space; Edward Elric, the Prince of Blood; Alphonse Elric, the Seer of Time; and Winry Rockbell, the Sylph of Void. 
> 
> I tried not to have any repeats, but I was constrained by the fact that all sessions require a Hero of Time and a Hero of Space. Also, in both the Sburb and Sgrub sessions we've seen, and possibly the Beforus trolls' session as well, the Hero of Space was aided by the Knight with the frogs, so some fans speculate that this is A Thing. Since, as it happened, May was the Hero of Space and Lan Fan was the Knight, which is a coincidence (originally Winry was to be the Hero of Space until FKC realised that Sylph of Void > Sylph of Space for her), I decided to go ahead and drop that in.
> 
> If you're curious as to why I picked a certain classpect/etc. that I did, let me know.


End file.
